Critical Investigation: Task #1

Before too long, you'll be needing to write your Critical Investigation essay - which means we need to step up our preparations to make sure we have everything in place. 

We have designed a series of tasks to help you complete comprehensive research and analysis of your chosen text and topic. All of the work you complete over the next few weeks will go into your Notes and Quotes document and will mean that you write your first draft of the Critical Investigation with exceptional research behind you. 

Final Deadline
All the preparatory tasks need to be finished shortly before Christmas: Friday 9 December. You will then have the Christmas holidays to write the first draft of your 2,000 word essay.

TASK #1 TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
TASK #1 DEADLINE: SET BY YOUR MEST4 TEACHER

Carry out close textual analyses of at least TWO chosen scenes/extracts/clips from your PRIMARY text and add them to your Notes & Quotes document. 

Note: you must ALSO post your textual analyses up as a separate blogpost.

A good starting point is to look again at the MIGRAIN questions you answered for your Summer Research Project. In particular, focus on Media Language (cinematography, mise-en-scene, editing, sound), along with Representation, Genre, Narrative and Audience.

The extracts should be able to exemplify some of the key points you wish to make in your Critical Investigation and link with some of the following key areas raised by your text...

Issues and debates 
Representation and stereotyping; Media effects; Reality TV; News Values; Moral Panics; Post 9/11 and the media; Ownership and control; Regulation and censorship; Media technology and the digital revolution – changing technologies in the 21st century; The effect of globalisation on the media.

Theories
Semiotics; Structuralism and post-structuralism; Postmodernism and its critiques; Gender and ethnicity; Marxism and hegemony; Liberal Pluralism; Colonialism and Post-colonialism; Audience theories; Genre theories.

Ideally, make sure it is an extract you haven't analysed before and embed the YouTube link in your posting if it's available.

Think of each analysis as like a MEST3 exam analysis but with one text instead of two - so you need to cover MIGRAIN and SHEP with detailed reference to specific aspects of the text. You are advised to watch the extract several times and to make detailed notes before embarking on the write-up, which should be in essay format (NOT in note form). If you do this well, you'll find that some of what you write will go straight into your essay when you start the first draft.

Use our Key Concepts Glossary to help you think about terminology to use. You should be including as many of these keywords and ideas as possible in your analysis (where relevant...this won't always be the case).

Good luck!